It was a tough choice.
Michael was one of those suckers that came to Bangkok and fell in love with a woman of bar stock. They cut a deal. She needed money and he had it. For a monthly payment, she would remain as faithful as a Labrador. He works hard and sends over the currency. Now she’s got her claws into the next gullible foreigner. A thousand lies later, the John begins to get suspicious. Why does she never pick up the phone? Why does she only ever speak about money? He gets in touch with Joe or someone just as shady. Joe gives it to them straight. Some foreign men married Thai women. Some thought they were a loving, generous husband. They were a career, a client, a job, medical family insurance, pension scheme. A dental care plan. One steady customer who paid the bills and smiled while he did so.
Michael’s future bride walked back into the room, fresh from her shower with a towel wrapped around her waist. Topless, she smiled lazily in the mirror as she stood there dripping water on the carpet. Joe picked up his camera. It was a hundred-dollar point-and-shoot digital number. He clicked off a couple of pictures. She was into it. Lost, wicked, sexy, surprised.
Secretive.
“So what’s this secret?”
“You’re the private dick, right? You work it out.” She smiled. “Who was that on the telephone? Was it Michael?” She dropped the towel to reveal her helplessness. She put her hands on her hips and posed for a couple more shots that wouldn’t make it into Michael’s report. She combed her fingers through her hair while squeezing her breasts together. She crouched down and looked up at the camera. She was a wayward creature with an impish smile. She had an angel’s face. She was perfect, almost…
“You know, baby, you’re breaking your fiancée’s heart.” Joe almost added, and mine.
“Ex-fiancée, you can tell Michael I’m sleeping around, I don’t care, we’re finished,” she picked up a pair of frayed jean-shorts from the floor and slipped them up those pins. “I don’t need him anymore.” No panties. Next, a pair of knee-length leather cowboy boots. Tassels running down the sides. She stood like that before Joe, a topless Thai cowgirl. “I just want to make myself beautiful for a moment,” she told him sitting at the vanity, “is that okay, Joe?”
“That’s just fine with me, baby,” he watched her towel dry that hair and begin the make-up routine. Catching his reflection in the mirror, she smiled and raised that eyebrow again. An invisible wire ran between that eyebrow and Joe’s ticker. He felt it tug. What was he?
A puppet?
Please...
“Pay me, please,” she said, and Joe opened his wallet. He pulled out three purple fives.
“What about this secret?”
“Later. I’ll tell you about it later, Joe.” She took the money. She walked towards the door. Once she got there, she turned. “I worry about you, Joe. It seems like you messed up inside. You should go to the temple in Bang Na. Ask for Abbot Adjarn. He’s a teacher and a monk. I think you will like him. He’s a little bit crazy just like you. I think he can help you, Joe.”
Before he could protest, the door had closed. He listened to her walk down the corridor and out of his life. The high heels clicked on the marbled tiles like a knife on a chopping board. The sound of a two-stroke motorbike waiting outside coughed to a start and pulled away.
She had gone.
Her ghost remained.
FOUR
YOU SEE a man on the bed. He kicks off his shoes and lights a cigarette. Who would smoke in Bangkok? You guess he just needed a vice. The city’s pollution wasn’t giving him the hit he required. You watch a gecko lizard hang upside down from the ceiling, waiting for a passing mosquito before falling with a splat to the floor. You think it’s artistic. Outside the window, two hawkers argue over territory. Suddenly, their voices are smothered by a blast of construction, another new hotel on the opposite block.
Inside the room, a Venus flytrap. Another fly escapes her jaws. You look at it. The flytrap that is. There’s a gift tag still attached. A present from a female client. The gift symbolic of something that you don’t understand. Something about faithfulness perhaps. Most expats used the bars and the ones that didn’t, were worse. They were liars too.
Bar lizards, and mongers.
The hotel room is bleak. You’ve stayed in bleaker rooms than the average bargirl, enjoying each miserable room more than the next. It all depended on the company. Years of trying to change mind-sets with different rooms, possessions, companions and beliefs, proved futile. Different boyfriends, girlfriends, and governments came and went but the general state of ennui remained the same. The Thais have a T-shirt with a slogan on the front - Same shit, different day.
The man switched on his Sony netbook.
Mr. Dylan :)
I am here in Thailand for the first time. First of all, it’s so hot! And smelly! The bathroom doesn’t have a proper flush! And no toilet paper! Hellooo! How can you survive in a place like this?
My Dad works over here and has a place in Bangkok! Mummy sent me over to check up on things. Plus it’s my gap year, so I really want to do some real travelling while I still can. Not seen too much yet, but went to the huge clothes market at Pratunam today. Picked up some really cool stuff, accessories, accessories!
Dad says his apartment is too small for me to stay in and he works long hours. So here I am on KohSan road! What a place! Swamped with hippies and gap-year students:)
Here’s the problem: I think that Daddy has a girlfriend who is a Thai, and that’s why he doesn’t want me to stay with him at his apartment. I think he is living with a Thai woman. Hello? Can we meet and talk about Thai women? My future may depend on it! How can I let everything that Mom and I worked for, go to a Bangkok hooker? I’ll be here in Bangkok for a week, and hopefully we can meet for a slim latte with cream and discuss how to stop Daddy from marrying and ruining my life! I hope you can help. You may be our only hope. : )
Please let me know when we can meet and talk about Daddy. Starbucks is good for me (khao San Road).
Thanking you very big,
Janey.
The man wrote back to her telling her to send him the address of the apartment and he’d have it staked out.
He opened the window and let in the stench of Bangkok City. When you first arrived years ago, you hated the smell of raw sewage, fried foods, diesel fumes, sun-dried fish and incense sticks. The smell wafted up from the drains, and bellowed out from food-carts, spat out by exhausts.
You love it now.
The stench keeps you grounded. It smells bad, but it is your bad smell.
You recalled that incident with a shudder. You had been okay at first. It was no big deal. Secrets were everywhere. Liars were everywhere.
Ghosts were everywhere.
FIVE
10th October 2000
DISAPPEARED.
Simply vanished.
The streets of Bangkok destroyed her.
He searched everywhere. The Prakanong canal, the mom and pop shops, her friend’s shacks along the river, under the bridge, On Nut, Ban Jack, and Udom Suk. He searched the dirt fields where the children rode their bicycles, and the roads where they played ball. He checked the schools and the temples.
Nothing.
She had disappeared.
Pops packed a bag. A change of clothes. The lucky coin. A bottle of Nam pla. He walked the streets day and night. He slept under bridges at night, and rested on concrete benches during the day. He spent all his money. All except the magic coin. He kept the magic coin. She had given it to him. She had found it in the street.
His angel.
Office workers and factory girls gave him coins as he begged in the mornings. The market vendors poured white whiskey into plastic bags of soda filled with ice. Stallholders gave him rice and sometimes meat and vegetables. They wished him well as he staggered through the labyrinth of alleyways and the maze of canals,
the secret roads that made up the great giant circuitry system of Krung Thep. He travelled every inch of concrete covering the great modern city.
And then he saw her.
He was standing at a whiskey stall that day. Large glass jars filled with spiced rum. She was wearing a tight fitting pair of shorts and a small figure-hugging T-shirt. She had an expensive mobile telephone in her hand. Her hair was styled into a sixties beehive. She looked sensational. How many years had passed?
Two?
Three?
Five?
She was now a woman. The heavens had opened and an angel spoke, “Pops, what are you doing here?”
“I was looking for you, my angel,” he said.
Monica’s eyes narrowed as she looked at the old man. “You want to play our secret game again, Pops?”
The old man’s eyes glistened. His hands felt moist and clammy.
How she had grown.
SIX
6th October 2010
SINCE MONICA left, Joe hadn’t been killing time. He had been forensically dissecting it.
Dreams.
Nightmares.
Visions.
A beehive and a cute eyebrow. She danced like a ghost.
How did ghosts dance?
Viciously insane. That was it. Insane. Vicious.
Her face glanced at him, withering exotically cruel. Her body movements were slow, meaningful, and enticing. Somehow, he had kept away from the blower. The touch of her skin. She abandoned herself. Eventually, he stood up and made it to the sink, splashing cold water on his face.
She was gone.
He walked back into the bedroom.
Outside, the sun was setting with shades of purple glimmering through venetian blinds. The light reflected on the opposite wall. Prison bars over the jaws of the carnivorous pot-plant. It was a Dali nightmare. A new age mystic’s wet dream. The walls were closing in, Slowly…
…The hotel receptionist called. Joe had a visitor. Send them up, he mumbled. There was a knock on the door. Joe opened it. French perfume. A long pair of pins and a slim waist. He looked at her face. Blue eyes. Blonde hair. A mouth that pouted by default.
Like raindrops, beautiful women were every-where.
Like raindrops, only a few ever landed on you. They would either soak into your constitution or drip away into that puddle of other former love disasters drying out; dying in the sun of realization.
Blondes were a rarity in Bangkok, but so were four-leaf clovers or a good porterhouse steak. Honest agents. Meticulous lawyers. Competent doctors. They were all rare.
As were blondes.
Her dress was a short designer number and her legs were wrapped in black fishnet-stockings. Her hair suggested the golden age of Hollywood that never gave up the ghost. Blue eyes. Lips painted red. If Ferrari did females, she was one of the sportier models. Her mother spent her winters in Dubai where she bred racehorses. Joe’s Mom was from Detroit and betted on them.
She walked into the dive and looked around. He asked her if he could help her. She smiled pleasantly and spoke. “You’re a private detective, is this right? Well, I am having a problem and I am thinking you are the one to help me. The police officers are useless. You were recommended. A friend of a friend told me about you. They told me you solved a case down on the islands?”
“I don’t have any friends. Especially on the island.” This was true. Joe’s only friend, James Hale, had moved to Pattaya where he played in the pool league and sold real estate. He had more success with the former than the latter.
The blonde knew who he was. She had one of Joe’s business cards to prove it. She weaved the card around her thumb and forefingers. “Perhaps I am having too many friends. She was found inside an apartment, early this morning. She’s dead.” Her accent was European, Scandinavian. Her accent was self-assembled furniture and welfare security.
“Suicide?”
“Maybe. She was found hanging there. Apparently, I need to talk with you.” She peered into the room again. She took it all in. The smell of expensive cigarettes and cheap whores. Ghosts of previous lays. “Is there somewhere else we can talk?” She looked around once more. “You actually live here?”
“It’s only temporary until I win the national lottery.”
“You certainly look like a winner,” she smiled admiring the Venus flytrap.
“It’s carnivorous. Sit down.” Joe motioned to the bed.
“Thank you.” The blonde sat gingerly on the edge of the bed. Joe sat on the nearby vanity stool and tried to act casual. He caught a glance of that thigh under her black lace tights. He looked directly at her. She had the kind of face that poets and artists got excited about during the renaissance. Those men of paper and paint became infatuated with the woman. They created their finest works in her honour before throwing their starving bodies in the Seine and splashing around in some half-assed suicide attempt. Some women in this world have the goods to make you do crazy things, Joe thought. Swim in the ocean, buy expensive gifts, and chew over picnic locations. Some men got married, some have kids, and some lop-off an ear lobe. This woman was the type who carelessly peddled such ideas to strangers and the thing was, she knew it. The truth is that a man can be happy and stay sane with any woman unless she has that kind of power over him. Once he is caught, he is no freer than a caged tiger in a temple zoo and is just as happy at being thrown the odd lump of meat. She looked at Joe’s business card once more before it disappeared back into her purse.
“So they call you, Dylan? That’s cute. So, Dylan, what’s your opinion of Japanese food?”
“I’m pro Japanese food and you can call me Joe.”
“Okay, Joe. I know a place on soi Ekamai. It’s expensive and exclusive. Frequented by the cream of Bangkok society.”
“In my experience, the cream of society is just that, rich and thick.”
“And you?”
“Poor and hungry.”
The blonde looked Joe up and down with an anthropological eye and said: “Well, are you going to get changed? Or are you going out like that?”
Joe stood and checked his reflection in the dusty mirror. Boot-cut faded blue jeans torn at the hem and a pinstripe casual shirt that hadn’t felt the hot side of an iron since the last military coup.
“The Japanese aren’t fussy about dress codes, but we might have to remove our shoes,” Joe said.
“In your case, it might be compulsory.” She looked down at his rat-bitten brothel creepers.
“I’ll do fine like this. Trust me.”
She blinked slowly in the hope that upon opening her eyes, he would be wearing an Armani suit and a pair of D&G loafers, but she was kidding herself.
“Let’s go,” Joe grabbed his keys and opened the door. He asked her to lead the way and followed those never-ending pins down the hotel stairs, through the lobby, and out of the hotel onto the street.
Outside, a deaf mute market trader held a conversation with a suit-pusher. The mute and the tailor used their own series of pantomimes and exaggerated gestures like Parisian street artists. The mute told the tailor the story of a python coming up through a drainage outlet attacking a street kid.
Joe hailed a yellow and green taxi. Inside, the persistent smell of thousands of fares driven around the Zone. Alcohol and cheap perfume. Second-hand cigarettes. They crawled slowly through the Sukhumvit traffic and took a left at soi Ekamai. The restaurant stood inside the mouth of the soi. They were just outside the Zone. The Zone was that strip of twenty blocks from Nana, down to Washington Square where the tourists exercised their fantasies in beer bars, cathouses, and massage parlours. Outside the Zone, there were places you could take your family, if you had one, and you wanted to take them there.
Joe didn’t, and he wouldn’t if he had.
SEVEN
THE RESTAURANT was set back from the ma
in road behind a large parking bay. The white building sparkled, lit by the fairy lights that hung around the entrance porch. They stepped out of the taxi and approached. Gravel crunched underfoot as they walked through the double doors.
Almost empty.
“The cream of society hasn’t made it here yet,” Joe said.
She got it, but didn’t smile.
They took a table in the far corner near the bar with a view across the restaurant. A dozen teak tables were as evenly spaced as mortician’s slabs. Two of them occupied by Japanese executives dressed in London pinstripes. A network of brass pipes, air-conditioning ducts, white plaster – some of it flaking from the walls where watercolours on rice paper hung; oriental butterflies hovered and exotic storks waded. Lotus flowers blossomed from aqua blue lily-padded ponds. Tropical lizards languidly lounged under the shade of flowering trees. For some, it passed as paradise.
He asked her what she was drinking. She said beer. He ordered her an Asahi, and for him, a soda water, no ice. The waitress wore a purple kimono with her hair held up by two wooden pins. Joe rattled off an order of seafood and meats. She wrote it all down and hovered back to the kitchen.
“You surprise me, Joe. I thought you’d be a drinker,” she said, “you have a drinkers face. Don’t all detectives drink?”
“Never met one that doesn’t.”
“But you don’t?”
“I used to. I had to quit.”
“I can see it now. A lot of expats drink, isn’t it so?”
“It’s the tropics. Either the drink brought them to the tropics or the tropics brought them to the drink. Never figured out which one it is. The thing to do here is to not sweat over the little stuff.” The waitress returned with the drinks and poured the golden liquid into her frosted glass. “Do you have a name?” He asked.
“Carina. I was born in Denmark. Copenhagen. I moved to England for university. I came to Thailand two years ago for teaching English. I first taught in a government high school and then I took on students privately…”
Red Night Zone - Bangkok City Page 2